


The Nails in Your Hands

by hitlikehammers



Series: No End To This Thing [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (But The Kind I'll Fix Later—Never Fear), (You Know Which One), Angst, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Credits Scene Fix-It, Fix-It, M/M, Pining, Self-Loathing, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers-centric, True Love, Wakanda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 13:25:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6706120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's a terrible liar.</p><p>Or: Steve's POV of that particular credit scene we all know <s>and love</s>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>  <b>SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nails in Your Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that didn't take long. Obviously, I had more feelings regarding this thing, enough to anticipate a 4-5 part series of one shots. Surprise, surprise.
> 
> Title credit [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9KLfsAK5KA); love to [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad), as always <3

Steve’s a terrible liar.

If he says anything, if he so much as speaks beyond single, short words—if he puts words to the breaking of his heart beyond any breaking it’s ever known, he will crumble, and the lie will ruin everything he stands for; will ruin everything he loves.

Even as he loses everything he loves, here and now: at the very least, he won’t have _ruined_ it.

And Bucky deserves that much. Bucky deserves to have his wishes, his desires, his _will_ realized without challenge or debate—Bucky deserve to have _himself_ put first above all others; he always has, but now.

Now more than _ever_.

And so Steve had simply nodded, when he’d said it after they’d left Siberia, and had forcefully pushed down the jagged knife-edge through the gaps in his ribs that’d twisted right, then left, and _dug_ when Bucky looked at those wan-lit chambers with something like longing, with something like what Steve wanted to be on the other end of, and holy fuck _all_ , but Steve’s selfish. Steve’s a monster underneath the uniform, the colors, the flag and the name: his _heart_ is selfish.

It just can’t stop with the _wanting_.

And he’d thought maybe there was fixing it, or willing it away; maybe the serum, or the ice. Maybe giving it freely and fully on the helicarrier and letting hands attached to Bucky’s face if not Bucky’s soul pummel it out of him until it just gave _up_ ; maybe Sharon’s lips on his own would solve the nagging, deathless _longing_ , the way his heart just ached to _be_ near, might damn well tear itself apart if it was ever held _close_ , wanted in kind—he thought he could outrun it.

He can’t.

So here, and now, with Bucky vulnerable, clad in white and face so sad but resolute—an angel like the ones Steve imagined when he was small, so sad to see the world broken and cruel, but still so perfect, so full of light and goodness: _beautiful_ , and breathtakingly so when Steve had no breath to spare; and Steve still doesn’t. Steve still can’t breathe, but here, and now, with Bucky in front of that chamber, open and waiting, and the attendants ready to slip him under: here, and now.

Steve cannot run from it, so he does everything he can to pretend it isn’t there.

Because Bucky deserves that much. He deserves a hand on his shoulder, and support at his back as he makes this choice, and he deserves the acceptance of that choice, even as Steve dies, every single fucking breath a farce, a ploy, a cover for what’s going on as his world shatters, and everything he knows about himself, everything that means anything for who he is and what he needs, goes back to the ice where it always should have stayed.

If Steve listens, he can hear Bucky’s heartbeat. If he focuses, he can pick up the flow and give of blood through those precious fucking veins, the only things that map Steve’s world and it’s good, that he doesn’t have a shield to hide behind anymore: because that’s what he’s used it for, coward that he is—he’d use it to hide from the way Bucky’s heart, the only thing Steve’s ever wanted to be worthy of, the reason he walked without a thought when Tony called him out in that dank fucking lab, because what’s a circle of metal worth compared to the love of his goddamned life, huh? But if he still had it, he’d hide that love, and that need, and the way his knees threaten to buckle, the way he bites blood into his mouth for the way he keeps his tongue—and he’s not worthy of it. Of shelter.

Of the heart he can hear as it slows, and oh.

Steve’s going down with him, of course he is.

He remembers how it feels, now, close to hand; cold in the tips of his fingers.

He watches Bucky as the moments stretch—it takes a while for the serum to be overcome by the cocktail feeding straight into him, and Steve makes himself stand there and watch, and listen to his world ending, and feel the bludgeoning that takes the ground he stands upon and tears it to pieces; feel it ebb to tremors, to wisps of soft breath, to, to—

It takes everything he has left inside of him not to cry. He doesn’t deserve to cry over the one thing he’s done right by Bucky, by the hearts in both their chests, in far too long. 

He doesn’t deserve to cry, but it takes _everything_ not to take it anyway.

Bucky's face is obscured by frost: wrong, so very _wrong_ when all that Bucky is makes Steve feel warm. But Bucky is still, and Steve can’t hear his heartbeat, now, and he doesn’t cry.

But what walks away from that room, from that body and suspended soul, is little more than a shell. It’ll walk. It might talk.

It won’t ever _live_ again, not really.

To speak to the King is almost beyond the capacity of his lungs—to know once again that he’s allowed the world to spin, _his_ life to go on in a universe where Bucky’s lungs are still, and this time worse, so much worse to have said nothing, to have nodded and not dropped to his knees and _begged_ —

But how could he; how _dare_ he? Hasn’t he failed Bucky enough, hasn’t he spat in the face of what Bucky wanted more times than he can ever make good on, make up for? Just walk away, Stevie, don’t throw that punch; don’t do anything stupid, until I get back—Bucky’d be free and clear to leave after Steve had found him on that table, but he’d stayed when Steve asked him, and fuck if he was ready to; Bucky’d reached for Steve and Steve had reached back but not enough; Bucky’d died inside the husk of his body and Steve made him come back, wrenched him into living and dealing with all the darkness that came along, alone, because Steve was, once more, not _enough_ to find him, to help him, to save him—

How _dare_ Steve ask that of Bucky again? How dare he _presume_ to be enough, in himself, to tip the scales? How can he argue to Bucky that he’s wrong, that he’s no danger, that any danger they can fight, _together_ , when it’s Steve’s self-serving need that lingers underneath; when it’s true, it’s true but that doesn’t matter a damn thing if what Bucky wants, what Bucky needs is rest, is solitude, is...this.

Alone.

How dare he?

He _doesn’t_ , that’s how. He does what’s _right_ for once, no matter the cost to himself.

So Bucky goes to sleep, in Wakanda, but Steve.

Steve finally, after far too long, gives his heart up, leaves it there, and dies to any shred of being that’s worth a goddamn thing.

Maybe this time, it’ll stick.

But Steve is a terrible liar, even to himself.

He’s not that lucky.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
